Archinect - Features

How to Understand Architecture Business Conditions Using the AIA's Architecture Billings Index

2024-05-20T08:23:00-04:00

Since 1995, the American Institute of Architects has conducted a monthly index detailing trends in billings by architecture firms in the United States. Over time, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) has become a valuable metric for charting the economic health of the profession, with Archinect reporting on the index monthly since 2012.

To help readers better understand how metrics from ABI translate into the reality of design and construction and to equip them with the tools to interpret the numbers, understand their source, and delineate between various categories, we have assembled a series of questions and answers pertaining to the index.

A Guide to Employee-Owned Architecture Firms, by Those Who Have Made the Change

2022-01-10T12:09:00-05:00

Throughout 2020 and 2021, the world of work has been subject to a relentless evaluation, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversations around remote working, asynchronous office hours, and workers’ wages have gained added agency, as almost all economic sectors seek to balance health and safety with turnover and productivity. Stepping back from specific employment topics such as these, COVID-19 has also caused a more fundamental re-evaluation of how work shapes our lives. A study earlier this year found that 66% of unemployed Americans were considering changing their occupation, dwarfing levels seen during the 2008 recession, while research by McKinsey found similar metrics even among those still in employment.

Within this context, it is perhaps no surprise that the topic of employee ownership of businesses has gathered pace. In a time where many are critically reflecting on how meaningful or fulfilling their core occupations are, the idea of employment generating results for the...

Finding the Contemporary City Between the Local and the Global with In-Between Economies

2017-03-22T12:03:00-04:00

How is the city made? Who is it made by? Who is it made for? These are the questions poised by In-Between Economies, an interdisciplinary research platform based in Copenhagen, London and Oslo. In their view, the only way to address them in the 21st century is to expand beyond the purview of architecture or urbanism. “Urban life, and our experience of it, is a complex mix of economic systems, social relationships, and infrastructural spaces,” they tell me. And to grapple with it, we need to start talking with people besides architects.

The Exhibitionary Complex

2017-01-12T12:19:00-05:00

One morning I woke up to a surprising text: my friend was on TMZ. For reasons never communicated to me, she had been hanging out with a celebrity of some renown when, as they walked to a club, they were surrounded by paparazzi. To distract them, my friend impulsively decided to lift up her shirt. “FRIEND FLASHES BOOBIE DECOY … Photogs Forced to Choose,” the headline read.